Anna Karenina eBook

In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards
evening he reached home. On the journey in the
train he talked to his neighbors about politics and
the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome
by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction
with himself, shame of something or other. But
when he got out at his own station, when he saw his
one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat
turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the
station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses
with their tails tied up, in their harness trimmed
with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as
he put in his luggage, told him the village news,
that the contractor had arrived, and that Pava had
calved,—­he felt that little by little the
confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction
were passing away. He felt this at the mere
sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put
on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped
up in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on
the work that lay before him in the village, and staring
at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse,
past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the
Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite
a different light. He felt himself, and did
not want to be any one else. All he wanted now
was to be better than before. In the first place
he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping
for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must
have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain
what he really had. Secondly, he would never
again let himself give way to low passion, the memory
of which had so tortured him when he had been making
up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering
his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he
would never allow himself to forget him, that he would
follow him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to
be ready to help when things should go ill with him.
And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too,
his brother’s talk of communism, which he had
treated so lightly at the time, now made him think.
He considered a revolution in economic conditions
nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of
his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of
the peasants, and now he determined that so as to
feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard
and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would
now work still harder, and would allow himself even
less luxury. And all this seemed to him so easy
a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive
in the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute
feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached
home before nine o’clock at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house
was lit up by a light in the bedroom windows of his
old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who performed the duties
of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet
asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling
sleepily out onto the steps. A setter bitch,
Laska, ran out too, almost upsetting Kouzma, and whining,
turned round about Levin’s knees, jumping up
and longing, but not daring, to put her forepaws on
his chest.